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IoT security spending will hit $348m in 2016 as cyber attacks grow

Gartner forecasts spending on IoT security will soar as smart devices are adopted

Security spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) will reach a hefty $348m in 2016, according to Gartner, an increase of 23.7 per cent on the $281.5m in 2015.

Ruggero Contu, a research director at Gartner, explained that the IoT security market is small but growing as businesses and consumers adopt smart and networked devices.

"Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 per cent from 2015, and will reach 11.4 billion by 2018. However, considerable variation exists among different industry sectors as a result of different levels of prioritisation and security awareness,” he said.

The analyst firm also predicted that spending will rise to $547m in 2018 as IoT adoption grows and the need to protect all end points and attack vectors becomes more important.

Significant amounts of money will be spent on protecting IoT devices in connected cars, commercial aircraft, and farming and construction equipment.

This will become a more pressing concern as over 25 per cent of cyber attacks will involve the IoT by 2020, according to Gartner, despite IoT security spending accounting for just 10 per cent of IT budgets.

Contu expects that IoT security will use the cloud so that it can scale with demand and threat vectors.

“IoT business scenarios will require a delivery mechanism that can grow and keep pace with requirements in monitoring, detection, access control and other security needs,” he explained.

"The future of cloud-based security services is in part linked with the future of the IoT. In fact, the IoT's fundamental strength in scale and presence will not be fully realised without cloud-based security services to deliver an acceptable level of operation for many organisations in a cost-effective manner.

"By 2020, Gartner predicts that over half of all IoT implementations will use some form of cloud-based security service."

Research carried out by V3 sister site Computing showed that security is the leading focus area for IT leaders exploring the IoT.

Some 30 per cent of the respondents indicated that the demand for IoT security and governance will have the most impact.

Over half said that technology to ensure privacy and data protection in the IoT requires the most progress before the IoT really takes off in their industries.